INTERVIEW: In ‘Not Even the Good Things,’ a ghostly girl is always nearby
Photo: Most of the characters in Not Even the Good Things cannot see a ghostly girl who shares their same mountain cabin. Photo courtesy of Maria Baranova / Provided by Glenna Freedman PR with permission.
Not Even the Good Things, the professional writing debut of Joseph Scott Ford, is a dark comedy that features a ghostly young girl who can only be seen by one character on stage. This makes for some interesting conversations and confrontations, especially since the play deals with a group of friends enjoying a well-deserved vacation in a mountain cabin.
Ford has actually written several plays, but Not Even the Good Things is his first full-length show. Previews begin July 10 at Theatre Row in New York City, and performances run through July 27.
“I actually moved up to New York to study acting with Bill Esper,” Ford said in a recent phone interview. “That’s what brought me into the whole mix of this I guess, and I loved it. And I learned a ton doing that.”
The specific inspiration for starting to write this play came from circumstances in Ford’s own life. He grew up Christian and lost his faith somewhere along the way. “Life was strange for a while, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that new version of reality,” he said. “And I was kind of having a hard time, but the good news is I got treatment. And I started feeling a lot better, and all my creativity came back. And one day my wife sent me this short little play, and I wrote her a play back. And we just kept writing them back and forth, and the floodgates sort of opened. I had this idea of writing a play that sort of took place in the context of another story maybe, so I saw all these friends gathered to have a good time and enjoy a well-deserved vacation. It’s just that there was also this girl in the room, and no one seemed to notice she was there. And she seemed to need help.”
Ford believes Not Even the Good Things, directed by Kelsey Claire, offers a commentary on how people can enjoy the good things in life, even when they are conscious of negative experiences happening to other people all around them.
When he was putting pen to paper, Ford realized that the staging of the play would be its toughest sell. To have one character be a ghost, without much recognition from the rest of the cast, can be tricky and disorienting.
“If you’re reading the script, the staging is the hardest thing to picture, but through the rehearsal process I’ve been able to see a lot of it come to life,” Ford said. “And we have this brilliant actress, Serena Parrish, who is playing the girl, and she’s so unbelievably inventive and in tune to the circumstance. And really I feel like my job as a writer and Kelsey’s job as a director is to help navigate her through the space. You have these moments where she might walk past a character. Does the character feel something? There’s all these kind of spooky moments that sort of take place in the story, and there’s this wonderful tension that develops. Wait, did they notice her? Who is seeing her? Who is not?”
Even though this is Ford’s feature-length debut, he didn’t struggle with the first draft. In fact, Not Even the Good Things “came roaring out,” as he put it. Then he started to ask himself the inevitable questions of whether the play was ready for an audience.
“We had a very humble reading in my living room, and we had a small audience,” he said. “And they just loved it. I’ll never forget that experience. That was a real first for me as a person, as a writer. They were laughing right when I hoped they would laugh. They were groaning when you hoped they’d groan. It was just beautiful. I thought I think maybe there’s something here that’s worth sharing. We kept honing it from there. You make some tweaks, and you learn a lot, particularly in a rehearsal process. I find that getting it up on its feet, it’s like a stress test in a way, and so the rehearsal process has become a great way to test the words and a real validation for the story. I love to give it to actors and directors and let them make it their own. That’s the fun part about the theater is it’s this collaborative endeavor.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Not Even the Good Things, by Joseph Scott Ford, plays July 10-27 at Theatre Row in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
